I see you even ask after our pears. We have lots of Beurrees d'Aremberg, Winter Nelis, Marie Louise, and "Ne plus Ultra," but all off the wall; the standard dwarfs have borne a few, but I have no room for more trees, so their names would be useless to me. You really must make a holiday and pay us a visit sometime; nowhere could you be more heartily welcome. I am at work at the second volume of the Cirripedia, of which creatures I am wonderfully tired. I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a sailor in a slow-sailing ship. My first volume is out; the only part worth looking at is on the sexes of Ibla and Scalpellum. I hope by next summer to have done with my tedious work. Farewell,--do come whenever you can possibly manage it. I cannot but hope that the carbuncle may possibly do you good: I have heard of all sorts of weaknesses disappearing after a carbuncle. I suppose the pain is dreadful. I agree most entirely, what a blessed discovery is chloroform. When one thinks of one's children, it makes quite a little difference in one's happiness. The other day I had five grinders (two by the elevator) out at a sitting under this wonderful substance, and felt hardly anything. My dear old friend, yours very affectionately, CHARLES DARWIN. CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, January 29th [1853]. My dear Fox, Your last account some months ago was so little satisfactory that I have often been thinking of you, and should be really obliged if you would give me a few lines, and tell me how your voice and chest are. I most sincerely hope that your report will be good...Our second lad has a strong mechanical turn, and we think of making him an engineer. I shall try and find out for him some less classical school, perhaps Bruce Castle. I certainly should like to see more diversity in education than there is in any ordinary school--no exercising of the observing or reasoning faculties, no general knowledge acquired--I must think it a wretched system. On the other hand, a boy who has learnt to stick at Latin and conquer its difficulties, ought to be able to stick at any labour. I should always be glad to hear anything about schools or education from you. I am at my old, never-ending subject, but trust I shall really go to press in a few months with my second volume on Cirripedes. I have been much pleased by finding some odd facts in my first volume believed by Owen and a few others, whose good opinion I regard as final...Do write pretty soon, and tell me all you can about yourself and family; and I trust your report of yourself may be much better than your last. ...I have been very little in London of late, and have not seen Lyell since his return from America; how lucky he was to exhume with his own hand parts of three skeletons of reptiles out of the CARBONIFEROUS strata, and out of the inside of a fossil tree, which had been hollow within. Farewell, my dear Fox, yours affectionately, CHARLES DARWIN.